Dec 282023
 

(Andy Synn delivers one final retrospective on albums from 2023 you may have overlooked)

Hey everyone, I’m back, feeling fully refreshed and ready to rumble after my week (and a bit) hiatus.

Before I get fully stuck into 2024’s upcoming slate of releases I’ve got two more pieces for 2023 for you all to enjoy – namely my last Synn Report of the year (coming on Friday) and this extra-big edition of “Things You May Have Missed”.

Now unlike previous editions, this one won’t just be focussing on albums from the last month (though there’s seven – I think – albums from December featured here) but will also take a look back at certain albums from the past year that I either didn’t get the chance to cover at the time, didn’t discover until much later, or just wanted to highlight one more time for people to check out.

Of course, even so there’s more artists and albums I wanted to include than I had space or time for – so I’d urge you, if you have any extra time, to check out the new Moonreich (which almost made my “Personal Top Ten“, Rosa Faenskap (which did) and Witch Ripper (which I know was on my “Critical Top Ten“, but still seems to have flown under a few radars) – but first, feel free to go through everything I’ve featured here (which I’ve broken up into separate sub-categories) and check out a few things you may have missed!

Continue reading »

Feb 202020
 

 

Did you enjoy the musical chocolates in Part 1 of today’s round-up? I hope you did, and Ii hope you’ll like what’s next, which continues following the theme of diversity that was evident in the first installment.

WHITE NIGHTS

One look at the cover art (above) for White Nights‘ debut EP, Into the Lap of the Ancient Mother, gave me an inkling that it wasn’t going to be the kind of music I usually expect from Iron Bonehead Productions — and it isn’t. Actually, there are two different covers, one for the CD edition and one for the vinyl edition. Here’s the other one: Continue reading »

Nov 202016
 

lhomme-absurde-monsters

 

As you can see, this is the second part of a two-part post that I began earlier today (here). Both parts were combined in a single post as I originally wrote it. But even though I throttled back my usual wordiness in order to get it finished and make it more digestible, I eventually concluded that a 10-band post was still too much for a single serving.

Part 1 of this post focused mainly on advance tracks from forthcoming albums. Now I’m moving away from individual songs and into full album and EP streams — which means I’m really giving short shrift in my words to music that’s deserving of more fulsome praise. I do wish I had time to say more, because although the band names may be obscure, these releases are really very good. I hope you’ll make time to give each of them a fair listen.

L’HOMME ABSURDE

Album: Monsters
Release date: October 25
Country: Russia
Order link: https://lhommeabsurdebm.bandcamp.com/album/monsters Continue reading »